Monday, November 3, 2008

This weekend, I made the most incredible beef broth...it needed only a pinch of salt. There are natural salts in the beef.Here is how I did it...

I got a chuck roast, very lean, 1 3/4 pounds for $3.50. I put it in the bottom of the crockpot. On top of it, I had one sliced onion, 1 diced tomato (I did not want to use canned tomatoes because they all had so much sodium), and a sliced red pepper. The I sprinkled it with black pepper, freshly ground. I put no liquids in at this point.

I let it cook on high for 1 1/2 hours or 2 hours or until it started to get browning on the edges of the meat and the sides of the crockpot inside. Then I added about 3-4 cups water and the nicest, darkest brown liquid resulted. Then I finished cooking it on high. You should never go more than 5 hours on high for a hunk of meat. Then I strained it, and refrigerated the broth after adding a tiny pinch of salt, sliced up the meat (after it cooled) to save for sandwiches later, and ate the veggies. Yum. The next day, the broth had a layer of fat on it that I removed. I put the broth in a pot on the stove, added cooked kluski noodles (they are a thin eggy noodle)and sliced green onions and warmed it up. Delicious, nutritious John really liked it, too. What a difference from beef bullion cubes or even canned beef broth. A bonus to doing this is that you will experience wonderful smells wafting out of your kitchen (If you are a vegetarian, you may think otherwise.)